DIY LED lights help

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It says working voltage is 12 volts. I think that just means it can handle up to 12 volts?

16295139947128873125829710876146.jpg
 
Back to original question, what comes out of the receiver? Simple answer, it's whatever you put in 🤪
Your BEC circuit on the ESC supplies power to the system. Whatever you have the ESC set at is what you will see at the receiver output.
Receivers can tolerate a wide range of input voltage, while the critical part is your servo, typically the ESC is set to 6V or 7.4V but read your manual.

You can buy plenty of 5V LED, they will give you an operating range on voltage. !2V might work, they will be very dim and probably useless, again depends on manufacturer. LEDs are typically in operating range at spec voltage +/- 10% i.e. 5V is 4.5-5.5V and once outside those tolerances it depends on what the manufacturer used in production and hard to predict. Most likely, only the color will change a little.

You can buy bunches of these, they work from 5-12V and is what you will need.

https://smile.amazon.com/ToToT-30PC...child=1&keywords=LED+5V&qid=1629520016&sr=8-3
 
It's a 12v strip with all 3 LEDs per segment in series with a 240-ohm resistor in between the 2nd and 3rd led per segment. This means each led is probably rated at 4v and the resistor is just there to limit current.

Edit: I decided to take a screen shot and draw on it showing how I percieve the circuit traces running and how the strip is rated at 12V.

1629669442806.png


To give a small electronics 105 lesson.

LED's are "current" devices, same as diodes since they have diode in the name. Diodes a forward voltage, think of it like a wall, once the voltage applied to the diode gets to that "wall limit" or above near 100% of that current will passthrough the diode. Standard 3mm and 5mm LED's run anywhere between 1.8v per LED and 3v per LED for fancy colors like white, blue, pink, uv, etc.

When find bigger ones like these or the ones in say a 120v flood light especially those huge square ones rated at 120v, are just a large physical body with a certain number of little LED dies placed in series and parralllel to achieve 120v or what ever voltage.

Hence why in this LED strip you have 3 per segment, 12/3 = 4v per LED "cube".
 
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Back to original question, what comes out of the receiver? Simple answer, it's whatever you put in 🤪
Your BEC circuit on the ESC supplies power to the system. Whatever you have the ESC set at is what you will see at the receiver output.
Receivers can tolerate a wide range of input voltage, while the critical part is your servo, typically the ESC is set to 6V or 7.4V but read your manual.

You can buy plenty of 5V LED, they will give you an operating range on voltage. !2V might work, they will be very dim and probably useless, again depends on manufacturer. LEDs are typically in operating range at spec voltage +/- 10% i.e. 5V is 4.5-5.5V and once outside those tolerances it depends on what the manufacturer used in production and hard to predict. Most likely, only the color will change a little.

You can buy bunches of these, they work from 5-12V and is what you will need.

https://smile.amazon.com/ToToT-30PC...child=1&keywords=LED+5V&qid=1629520016&sr=8-3

It's a 12v strip with all 3 LEDs per segment in series with a 240-ohm resistor in between the 2nd and 3rd led per segment. This means each led is probably rated at 4v and the resistor is just there to limit current.

Edit: I decided to take a screen shot and draw on it showing how I percieve the circuit traces running and how the strip is rated at 12V.

View attachment 165318

To give a small electronics 105 lesson.

LED's are "current" devices, same as diodes since they have diode in the name. Diodes a forward voltage, think of it like a wall, once the voltage applied to the diode gets to that "wall limit" or above near 100% of that current will passthrough the diode. Standard 3mm and 5mm LED's run anywhere between 1.8v per LED and 3v per LED for fancy colors like white, blue, pink, uv, etc.

When find bigger ones like these or the ones in say a 120v flood light especially those huge square ones rated at 120v, are just a large physical body with a certain number of little LED dies placed in series and parralllel to achieve 120v or what ever voltage.

Hence why in this LED strip you have 3 per segment, 12/3 = 4v per LED "cube".
Wow, thanks for the lesson! Seriously, this is just one of those things I never learned much about but it's a lot of fun to mess with.
 
The other thing you want to be aware of / cautious of is the current draw. A normal LED like the one in the stock transmitter or that is used in the ESC is only going to use at most 20ma. The bigger LED's are going to draw more current for example if you look up the ws281x addressable RGB led strips on amazon, each of those LED's when set to 100% brightness and all 3 colors on to make show "white" will draw I think 100 -120ma. But wait I said 20ma per led, the ws821x would have 3 LEDs, that should be 60ma, the other 40 - 60ma comes from the computer chip built into the LED to allow it to be addressed, control brightness of each color, and repeat the commands to the next LED.

Based on the fact you have a 5-meter strip of LEDs, it came with a 12v 3A (3000ma) supply and all the led segments are in parallel that means each of the segments should get 100ma, but the 240-ohm resistor limits the 12v to 50ma per segment.

I bet you're wondering how all this relates to you, well let's say you could use these strips and you ran them around the inside of your car's body, you used a total of 5 segments. At 50ma per segment and using 5 segments the LEDs would be drawing 250ma constantly from your ESC and battery while in use. To put that into perspective, if you were using a 2500mah pack 10% of its usable charge would be used up by the LEDs alone.
 
I bet you're wondering how all this relates to you, well let's say you could use these strips and you ran them around the inside of your car's body, you used a total of 5 segments. At 50ma per segment and using 5 segments the LEDs would be drawing 250ma constantly from your ESC and battery while in use. To put that into perspective, if you were using a 2500mah pack 10% of its usable charge would be used up by the LEDs alone.
I was actually wondering about the resulting drain on the battery, thanks for the explanation!
 
You don't have to worry about the LED's draining it in any significant amount of time.
Motor ~ 100A (or more)
Servo 3-4A
10 LED - 0.2A (probably a lot less pending your selection)
 
I can advise on the choice of LED strip. It`s clear that they last long enough and you didn`t say you were going to change it for a new one, but I recommend to consider different options. After all, 7 years is a long life of LEDs and soon you`ll need to replace it. Now appeared interesting new items, for example I bought these strip lights, they`re cool synchronized with the music, not dim, which is why I installed them in my car. I also installed them in my apartment and adjusted them to my schedule - very convenient. If you put them in the car, it`s useful to install voltage regulators, so that the device doesn`t get more than 12 V.
 
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